Misc. Index

Gabbard
Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis
Rethinking Therapeutic Action

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Schizoid Factors in the Personality, Fairbairn (1940)

Fairbairn wants to focus on schizoid mental processes, which exist on a spectrum, schizophrenia existing at one extreme. He wants to focus on schizoid processes for a number of reasons, one of them being that these processes are experienced by most patients, even those considered non-schizoid — e.g., patients described as hysterical, obsessional, and phobic individuals. The “fundamental schizoid phenomenon is the presence of splits in the ego,” a feature shared by all people. (Although theoretically, someone “whose development had been optimum” might not have such splits.) At the most extreme level, a split in one’s ego results in depersonalization or derealization; at a less extreme level, a split can result in one feeling artificial or emotionally disconnected from friends. Psychoanalysis have long believed that schizoid processes are caused by a fixation in the early oral stage. The infant at this stage focuses on taking (over giving), which comes in the forms of incorporation and ...
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Unconscious Thoughts and Feelings in Psychotherapy

The mammalian brain continuously and automatically makes associations. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux gives the example of a rabbit that encounters a fox at a specific watering hole and barely escapes. The watering hole and the fox are now associated in the rabbit’s brain and connected together by fear. If the rabbit visits the watering hole again, it will automatically think about the fox and feel afraid. Related associations join to form schemas — that is, internal working models of ourselves and others. Imagine a young girl we’ll call Jasmine who repeatedly gets criticized by her parents for expressing an opinion. This experience evokes feelings of shame. Like the rabbit that comes to associate the watering hole with (physical) danger, Jasmine comes to associate expressing her opinion with (social) danger. She, in other words, comes to develop a schema that holds that it is unsafe to express her opinion with others. Like the associations that form them, schemas are originally adaptiv...
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Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2004)

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